Pulse (TFD)
"Pulse" is the second episode of the first season of BrambCrackers' The Frozen Dead. It is the second episode of the series overall. Summary An incident sends the base into chaos, forcing the scientists to reconsider everything they think they know about the sickness. Plot Synopsis Parker stands by the undead man in quarantine and observes him quietly. In the other room, a now-undead Nathan shuffles about, until he spots Parker and charges toward him. Parker isn’t aware until it’s too late. Nathan reaches him and grabs him, biting him in the shoulder. Parker’s screams alert the rest of the base and they all go to rescue him. Julia pries Parker away as Jackson, Spencer, and Edgar work to tie up Nathan to a bed. As they settle down, it’s revealed that during the fight the door to the quarantined room the other undead man is in was unlocked, although the group doesn’t know this. Charlie helps Parker patch himself up as the rest of the group stands over the undead Nathan, watching him as he tries to get to them. Jackson ushers Mitch and Brun out of the room, but Mitch convinces his father to let him stay, while Brun is still forced to leave. Parker looks over Nathan. He asks one of them to gag him, so Jackson does so, and Parker goes to feel for the man’s pulse at his neck. He feels none, so he gets a stethoscope and still gets nothing. He points this out, saying the man is technically dead. Spencer asks the obvious question: “Why is he still moving?” Parker has no obvious answer. Parker then connects the undead man they have in quarantine to Nathan, wondering if it’s the bite that caused Nathan’s reanimation. Parker takes a saliva sample, making sure Nathan is thoroughly held down, and Julia looks over it. She notes that the saliva is packed full of harmful bacteria. Concerned, Parker then runs blood tests on both Nathan and himself, and finds Nathan has abnormal amounts of bacteria in his blood. In himself, Parker notices his wound already beginning to get infected, so he patches it up, gives himself antibiotics, and gets some rest, telling them to put Nathan through an MRI machine on a hunch. They do so and find that there's still some activity in Nathan’s brain, despite him being dead. Charlie notes that brain activity can continue as much as ten minutes after death, but Nathan has been dead for far longer, making this impossible. The group separates after securing Nathan back to a bed, and Charlie stays by Parker’s side, while Jackson, Edgar, and Freida talk with Julia about the disease. She says that through the blood she managed to isolate something out of the ordinary, something that looks like a virus, though one unlike any she’s seen before, and she packages it and sends it to the mainland for them to test it formally. Freida notes to the group that with the storm the way it is, they might not get a response for a while. However, an hour later, they do get a response via text message. It says only one word: “Wildfire”. The scientists discuss this but aren’t able to come to a consensus on what it means. Edgar suggests that it could be the name of the disease, but they shrug it off. Meanwhile, Brun explores the base, looking at all the scientific equipment. Mitch finds him and tells him he shouldn’t be so nosy. Brun says it’s no big deal, but Mitch tells him there are dangerous things on the base, warning him about the undead, so Brun decides to head to the recreational room. However, along the way, he comes across the quarantine room with the undead man inside, and he looks at it in fear and wonder. Leaning against the glass, he accidentally opens the door, and when it comes charging at him he barely manages to close it in time. He leaves it cracked open as he runs away. Later, Parker wakes up from a bad dream and can tell he’s about to turn, the infection getting worse and worse. He gets Julia, Edgar, Charlie, and Meredith to help him into the MRI machine so they can get more readings on the disease. They tie him down and put him through the MRI multiple times, once before he dies, once after he dies, and another as he reanimates; they record the time it takes him to reanimate. They find the same meningitis-like infection rooting from the brainstem that Dr. Jenner found on the show. Charlie determines that the only way to kill them is via the brain, as they’re already technically dead. Charlie tests this by grabbing a scalpel and reluctantly going to stab Parker through the back of the head. He can’t bring himself to do it, so Edgar takes it from him and does it himself, and like that Parker is dead again. They determine that the only way to learn more is through opening up the brain and testing tissue samples. Charlie and Julia clear a room and open Parker up in there, Edgar and Meredith watching from the other room. They find his brain is discolored and document more weird findings, and Julia takes a sample that she intends to test later. As Charlie and Julia operate on Parker, Spencer and Jess make love in their room. As they do so, the undead man under quarantine manages to escape and he roams the halls of the large research station. He passes their room, running into a table in the hall and knocking it over. This stops the two of them and Spencer goes to investigate. The man sees him and attacks. Jess runs into the kitchen nearby and grabs a knife, and she pulls it off of Spencer and stabs it in the back. It does hardly anything to it, but it does let go of Spencer. The two of them run away from it, trying to find the rest of the group. When Jackson can’t find Mitch and Brun in their room, he goes looking for them, and he comes across the undead man and immediately runs into the control room and puts the base in lockdown, which closes and locks all doors in the facility. He meets up with Julia, Edgar, Charlie, and Meredith after Charlie and Julia have finished operating on Parker, having put him in a body bag and a refrigerated room, and tell them why the base is in lockdown. Julia decides to leave with him to help find his children somewhere in the base. Mitch and Brun are both in the recreational room when the alarms for the station lockdown go off. Confused, they both get up to leave to try to find their father or anybody else who might know what’s going on. However, they reach the door just as it closes and locks as part of the lockdown, while the undead man walks into the room from the other side, just before that door closes and locks too, trapping it in there with them. When they see it, they crouch down, trying to hide from it. Jackson and Julia reach the control room and look through the cameras in the base to try to find his children. He sees them trapped in the recreational room and immediately gets on the intercom, telling them there’s a hallway to their left that didn’t close as part of the lockdown. In a tense moment, Mitch and Brun crawl around the room trying to hide from the undead man as they make their way to the hallway, the infected distracted with the intercom speaker. However, the man notices them and starts chasing after them. They run down the hallway and come across a closed doorway; a dead end. Frantic, Jackson looks through the other cameras and finds Hugo nearby. He comes in through the intercom and tells him to go to the doorway, because it can only be opened from one side; his. Hugo gets there just as the undead man reaches the kids and he enters in the code to open the door. The kids get through, but the undead man grabs Hugo and pulls him down, digging into him. Jackson yells at the kids to run, and Mitch closes the door before following Brun, trapping Hugo and the infected in there. Other Characters *Undead Man *Nathan *Meredith Bryan *Hugo Schultz Deaths *Stewart Parker (Alive and Zombified) *Hugo Schultz (Alive) Ratings How would you rate "Pulse?" Feel free to leave feedback below as well! 10/10 9/10 8/10 7/10 6/10 5/10 4/10 3/10 2/10 1/10 Trivia *Last appearance of Stewart Parker *Last appearance of Hugo Schultz (Alive) Category:BrambCrackers Category:The Frozen Dead